Ben's team lost 3-1 at 9 a.m. on the last Saturday in October, and by 10:40 we were on the road east with Harper still in her shin guards, eating a granola bar and explaining exactly whose fault the second goal was. It was not hers. She was very clear about that.
Every fall I say we're going to see the leaves on Lookout Mountain, and every fall soccer eats the Saturdays. This year I gave up waiting for a free one and decided a 9 a.m. game counted as free if we packed the car the night before.
DeSoto State Park and Little River Canyon are about an hour and a half east of Decatur, a little more with a gas stop. You go through Huntsville and Scottsboro, cross Sand Mountain on Highway 35, drop into the valley at Fort Payne and climb up onto Lookout Mountain. Harper asked "Are we on the mountain yet?" on both mountains.
We started with lunch, because a ten-year-old who just lost a soccer game is not someone you take on a scenic drive hungry. DeSoto State Park has picnic tables in the woods near the river and an honor box for the day-use fee, $2 for the car. We ate pimento cheese sandwiches, apples and a few pieces of the Halloween candy I had bought for the 31st and already opened. The air up there felt about ten degrees cooler than Decatur, and I was glad I had thrown jackets in the trunk.
Then DeSoto Falls, the big one, a few miles north toward Mentone. It drops more than 100 feet into a dark pool, and you look at it from an overlook behind a railing. Harper stood there a long time without saying anything, which is her highest compliment.
In the afternoon we drove back south to Little River Falls, a wide waterfall right beside Highway 35, and started down the canyon rim drive. It's a slow road with a string of overlooks, and the canyon is deeper than you expect from the parking lots. The color was peaking up top, red and orange along the rim, but still mostly green down in the canyon. At one overlook the sign pointed to Grace's High Falls, which in a wet season is a long ribbon down the canyon wall. In a dry October it was a dark stripe on the rock. Ben said, "Well, it's a very tall stripe."
We made it about halfway along the drive before the light started going. Late October sunsets come early, and the road down to Fort Payne is not one I want to do in the dark with a sleepy kid asking about bathrooms. We were home at 7:50.
What we'd do differently next year
We had a good day. We also made it harder than it needed to be. For next fall, here are the notes I typed into my phone from the passenger seat on the way home:
- Pick a Saturday with no game, or go on a Sunday. Leaving at 10:40 meant we did everything a little fast and never finished the rim drive.
- Go a week later. The color up top was good on October 25, but the canyon itself was still green. Late October into the first week of November is the usual window, and I would lean toward the November end of it. Every year is its own thing, though.
- Do the canyon first and the falls second. The overlooks are what you want in good light. DeSoto Falls looks the same at 4 p.m. as it does at noon.
- Fill the tank in Fort Payne. We did, barely. Once you're up on the mountain, you don't want to be watching the gas light.
The one tip I would give anyone doing this for the first time: bring real jackets, not hoodies. The overlooks are windy, and "about ten degrees cooler" feels like more when you are standing still at a railing waiting for a kid to finish taking pictures of the same tree.
What it cost
- Gas: about $25 (roughly 230 miles round trip)
- State park day-use honor box: $2
- Little River Falls and the canyon rim drive: free
- Picnic from home: about $16
- Hot chocolate for three at a gas station in Fort Payne on the way home: $7
- A jar of apple butter from a roadside stand: $8
Total: about $58. For a waterfall, a canyon and a lot of red leaves, I will take that trade every October.
